Two Little Secrets

“I didn’t mean it when I said you might find someone who rang your chimes,” she ground out, slurping up the rest of her drink. She considered flagging down a waitress and asking for a non-virgin piña colada. “But if you had to find someone, couldn’t you find someone who doesn’t have a curfew?”

“Is anyone using this lounger?” A male voice sounded from her left.

She turned her head and looked up. And up.

Tall. Very tall. Maybe six foot, five inches. Surfer-blond hair. Blue eyes that rivaled her own. A tanned body that could easily grace the cover of a fitness magazine.

Any other woman would have melted into a puddle by now. By all rights, Ginna should be drooling uncontrollably, suffering heart palpitations and possibly stammering while making sure to show her bikini-clad body to its full potential.

Ginna wasn’t drooling, her heart rate was perfectly steady, and her speech, when she answered the man, was coherent.

In fact, she didn’t feel anything at all.

She could have been looking at one of her brothers.

WHO THE HELL IS HE? And what makes him think he can move in on Ginna that way? Zach might have looked as if he was listening to barely clad Kendall, but he was really focusing on Ginna.

He knew to the second the moment she took possession of the beach lounger, laying her towel over the surface, then settling down on it. He thought he’d die when she applied lotion to her exposed skin. Once finished, she popped a CD into her portable player and settled the headphones in place. He knew to the second when she ordered a drink. And damn, some surfer dude was trying to put the moves on her. Even from this distance, Zach felt blinded by the guy’s pearly whites.

He’d come down here with the intention of wearing himself out on a sailboard. What he hadn’t expected was sweet young Kendall Taylor to latch on to him.

“So how long are you staying here, Zach?” She looked up from under the cover of lush dark eyelashes.

“A couple weeks,” he replied in a voice meant to deter, but all it seemed to do was entice her.

“Really? So am I,” she purred.

Zach had never felt more of an urge to scream for help. This woman was way too dangerous for him.

Kendall wasn’t old or experienced enough to let her natural sensuality speak for itself. She tried too hard to behave in a sexy fashion, which turned him off, thank God. But he hazarded there were at least twenty men there who’d be willing to take what she was offering. He wasn’t one of them.

He snuck a quick glance in Ginna’s direction again. Mr. Blond and Beautiful took the lounger next to her. His gestures and grins were meant to look boyish and appealing. Zach figured them to be as fake as his gleaming teeth.

If she was crazy enough to fall for the toothpaste poster boy, he wouldn’t have much respect for her.

Dammit, she was smiling at the guy! That smile that instantly aroused Zach.

What could she be smiling about?

“Perhaps we could get together later for a drink,” Kendall murmured, moving in closer until the clean sea air seemed tainted by her musky perfume.

Zach felt as if a noose was slowly tightening around his neck.

Damn, he was glad he’d met Ginna. No matter what, he wouldn’t have succumbed to Kendall’s oh-so-obvious charms. He looked down at red-glossed pouty lips.

“Kendall, what are you—seventeen, eighteen?”

She straightened. “I am twenty,” she said haughtily.

He doubted her twentieth birthday was in the near future.

“Oh, honey, I have T-shirts older than you,” he said gently. “You should be off chasing some guy closer to your own age.” Like that surfer hitting on Ginna.

Kendall’s smile turned to pure sex kitten. “They’re nothing more than boys eager to show off their muscles.” She rested her hand on his arm. “I happen to like older men. They know how to treat a woman.”

Zach silently vowed to never again talk to any female between the ages of twelve and thirty.

“Yeah, but we also break down a lot sooner.”

Kendall studied his face. Her resigned expression told him she finally realized she wasn’t going to get anywhere with him.

“You’ll regret it, you know.” She propped one hand on her hip.

“I don’t think so.” He delivered the blow as softly as he could.

“Well, if you change your mind, I’ll be around.” She flashed him another sex-kitten smile and walked off with hips swiveling in a way guaranteed to catch any man’s attention.

Zach noticed she did just that. He had the urge to wrap a towel around her barely clad derriere.

At the same time a frightening thought hit him like a thunderbolt.

His encounter with the young woman gave him a glimpse of his future as the father of a teenager. In about thirteen years Emma would be the same age as Kendall, and he would have to play the heavy, scaring off hormone-driven teenage boys. He feared he’d not survive Emma’s teenage years.

For now, he was going to take a sailboard out into the water and conquer the damn thing even if it killed him.

“WHAT DOES IT TAKE for someone to understand the word no?” Ginna grumbled as she marched down the hallway leading to the rest room. The only place she was certain he wouldn’t follow her into. “It comprises two letters, one syllable, and the idiot doesn’t get it. I swear whatever bleach he’s using on his hair has seeped into his brain.”

She’d spent the past hour convincing Tad that no, she wouldn’t meet him for drinks. Or have dinner with him. And a big no to going out on a boat with him at midnight to watch the stars. It was as if with each refusal, he grew more determined to tempt her into the perfect date.

He saw himself as the perfect catch for a woman.

She saw him as a man with an ego much larger than his brain.

She was about to push open the door to the ladies’ room when someone grabbed her hand and spun her around, setting her back against the wall. She was ready to fight back when she realized just who had hold of her.

“Did you ever think about saying a person’s name so you wouldn’t scare the hell out of them?” she gasped, pushing Zach away from her. He obligingly stepped back. He was still wet from his time in the water.